Megan’s children were just 11 and 13 when what they describe as excessive home visits by the police began.
In 2021, the brothers – who are Indigenous – had been bailed after being passengers in a stolen car. Over the next 20 months, the police visited their home to conduct bail checks more than 150 times. Often police visited in the middle of the night, or in the early hours of the morning when the children were asleep.
“They would knock on the door, bang on the windows with their torches, shine torches through the windows. It was relentless,” says Megan, who is using a pseudonym for legal reasons.
“We want police to understand what that felt like but they don’t seem to be listening. Now me and my boys have to go to court and relive it just to get some justice.”
The brothers, who are from regional New South Wales, are launching a case against the police in the federal court over the checks, alleging racial discrimination. The firm representing the brothers, the Justice and Equity Centre (JEC), claims the family are not alone.
“Stories like these are too common,” says Grace Gooley, a senior solicitor at the Justice and Equity Centre.
The JEC commissioned research which analysed police data and found Aboriginal children on bail were subject to home visits more often than non-Aboriginal children in the five years to March 2024. It also found Aboriginal children were 11.7% more likely to be checked and subjected to 42% more checks on average. They were also more than twice as likely to be the subject of “very frequent” checks, meaning more than 11 checks in 30 days.
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The case will turn on this research, which was conducted by the UNSW professor Don Weatherburn and Curtin University associate professor Anna Ferrante. If the case is successful, the JEC says it would be the first court finding of racial discrimination based on statistical evidence in NSW.
The JEC had filed a racial discrimination complaint about the matter at the Australian Human Rights Commission on behalf of the brothers earlier this year. The complaint could not be settled through conciliation with NSW police, leading the family to turn to the federal court to make a finding, the JEC said.
Gooley says she believes Megan’s kids were subject to excessive bail checks because they are Aboriginal.
“NSW police are failing on Closing the Gap targets and the disproportionate rates of arrest and imprisonment of Aboriginal young people in NSW are unacceptable,” she says.
The former NSW police commissioner Karen Webb said in 2023 that making officers responsible for addressing Closing the Gap targets would lead to “competing duties”. The comments came in response to a five-year review by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission into the force’s approach to Aboriginal people that said the police did not have a commitment to reach these targets.
Megan says there were often three, and sometimes up to six, police officers who would come to her house to conduct the bail checks on her children, who had no significant criminal history and are now aged 15 and 18. She says police would often conduct a bail check on the brothers if a car in the regional city she lives in had been reported stolen.
“[They would say] ‘Well, if you don’t let us in, we’ll have them up for a breach of bail, and we’ll be back to arrest them’,” Megan recalls. “I was too scared to go to sleep, in case I missed them knocking on the door.
“Police say they treat everyone fairly, but it feels like we’ve been targeted. And the numbers back us up,” Megan says, referring to the research conducted by the JEC.
“We want police to stop targeting Aboriginal kids, and we want people to know what’s happening.”
In 2023, the police dumped a decades-old policy that proactively policed children who had recently offended or were at risk of offending. It came after the 2023 police watchdog report on the NSW police approach to Aboriginal people, which found the strategy was potentially unlawful.
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A 2025 report by the watchdog into bail checks recommended police only conduct home visits if there is a court order.
A spokesperson for NSW police says: “Proactive policing strategies, including bail compliance checks, are designed to protect the people of NSW and to ensure persons charged with committing criminal offences are behaving in compliance with their bail conditions, which are often imposed by the court.”
The spokesperson says police recognise the overrepresentation of Aboriginal youth in the criminal justice system, and their strategies are guided the Aboriginal Strategic Direction and Youth Strategy.
“These strategies reflect the Closing the Gap Implementation Plan, ensuring that culturally appropriate diversionary practices are implemented whenever possible.”
Last year, amid a heated state-wide debate on youth crime, the government passed a year-long law that made it harder for young people accused of committing a break and enter or car theft offence while on bail to get bail again. The laws were extended in February for another three years, despite no review yet being conducted into its effectiveness to curb crime.
The NSW government has also increased funding for intervention and diversion programs, committing $88m over four years.
In the two years from June 2023, there was a 34% increase in young people in custody in the state. Aboriginal young people accounted for 60% of the youth custody population.
Youth crime has in the medium and long term remained steady, and has dropped in the regions over the past two years, according to data by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.
Vicki Sentas, a policing expert at UNSW, says punitive approaches to bail do not make communities safer in the long term.
“They’re just a disaster for children’s futures,” she says.